Watching the Election
June 5, 2008 § 1 Comment
Tuning into the coverage Clinton’s and Obama’s speeches last night, I must say that the best analysis was coming from Twitter. All of the major news outlets had uploaded their stories about the respective candidates, citing Clinton’s shortcomings and offering analysis about why she failed, and trumpeting Obama’s clinching the nomination.
What I had just watched on TV and what I was finding on the Internet just didn’t match.
I confess, I bought into the media hype like everyone else, and I was totally expecting Clinton to concede. I haven’t been paying attention to much of either her campaign or Obama’s, and I haven’t watched much of the debates over the last five months because I like them both and I can’t stand to see them get ugly at each other. I was excited for all of this to come to an end so that the dems could stop being so divisive.
I found myself surprised at my response when she did not concede: I was really delighted and proud.
I thought her speech was great, and although she didn’t offer an endorsement of Obama, I thought she offered some incredibly gracious words that over the long term may actually unite her supporters and his.
This was the story, and I was getting no satisfaction from the ready-made stories from the Wall Street Journal and the Associated Press. It was so obvious that the major news outlets had already written what they intended to publish, and it reflected what they had expected to happen, not what actually had happened. And live TV was not much better! The pundits were so confused and did not know what to make of what had happened. I was left very unsatisfied.
I was honestly getting better coverage and analysis from Twitter. I was more interested in the spontaneous reactions from my Twitter friends, to the news and to each other than anything the pundits had to say.
FriendFeed NPTech Room
June 4, 2008 § Leave a comment
I am remiss for not posting this earlier (not that anyone is reading this blog yet). Johnathon Coleman created a room in FriendFeed for nonprofit technology professionals. He and Barb Kantor have been working together to get people talking to each other and sharing resources.
I, of course, haven’t had the time to participate much yet, but I am finally starting to get FriendFeed. I have already stated here that I have been seriously underutilizing it. No more! I thought it was just a simple aggregator, collecting stuff that I’m putting out in the world in my various social networking platforms in one place. Okay, that’s cool, but you can also use it as a forum to talk to people. There is talk of it possibly replacing email listserves because it makes it so easy. I’m not quite convinced on that front, but its still cool.
I’m so excited that I figured out what Imaginary Friends are for! You can still follow people who don’t use FriendFeed. What a fantastic idea.
However, if you want to join the conversation, you have to join FriendFeed. I highly recommend it.
Twitter and The Like
June 2, 2008 § Leave a comment
There was lots of interesting chatter going on last night over Twitter, Facebook, and FriendFeed about a new Twitter competitor called Plurk. Haven’t tried it myself, but I was following a bit of the chat into to the wee hours (yes, I stayed up too late again).
What I have found through experimentation and following these tweets and conversations is that Twitter and FriendFeed work great in combination, that you can have more robust conversations via FriendFeed, and that Twhirl adds some really nice functionality to both Twitter and FriendFeed. I know now that I haven’t been using FriendFeed to its fullest potential. I haven’t been using tools like FriendFeed for their intended purpose: social networking. Duh! Again, its one of those tools that becomes more useful when you connect with more people.
I also learned that there are a number of companies out there that look like they’re going to give Twitter a run for their money. Twitterers are complaining that Twitter crashes all the time, and sometimes eats the tweets that they are putting out there. So you visit a site like When Twitter is Down to give you some advice about what to do: “Cry like a tiny little baby.”
Companies that are on the horizon: Plurk, ZobZee, and possibly Jaiku. There are probably others, but these are the ones I know about. Seems that people were going in droves over the Plurk last night, so much so that the system went down. Ha! One critic said aptly something like “if you’re going to position yourself as a competitor to Twitter, one thing you should make sure never happens are system outages.”
I couldn’t agree more. After the weekend I’ve had, that is especially true. Nothing was working for me all weekend. The RCN “customer service” representative actually said to me (and I quote) “I have no reason to speak with you further.” This after I thought we had been having such a nice conversation. Yes, my problem wasn’t solved, but we were chatting and laughing and he was asking me questions about Second Life. Very friendly, I thought, but then he totally dissed me! I was hurt. He left me high and dry with my problem unsolved. So I do not have the patience for another “cool” Internet tool that’s not going to function properly.
I’ll keep tabs on the Twitter and FriendFeed chatter and see what others say when these tools come online (most are still in beta) and see if any of them are truly viable.
Women Who Tech
June 1, 2008 § Leave a comment
I went to a local gathering of Women Who Tech today, and met some very nice people: Kara, Tiffany, and Rachel (we’re all following each other on Twitter now — thank goodness I have been Twittering recently! That was one of the first things they asked me). We introduced ourselves, and I confessed to being more of a user than a programmer, but they assured me that I fit in. Rachel pointed out that really most jobs these days are tech related. I’m grateful that the definition is broad enough to include neophytes like me.
Cool Things I Have Discovered Through Twitter
May 30, 2008 § Leave a comment
In just the first week since Twittering (or is it tweeting?) in earnest, I have discovered the following things:
- The Peace Innovation project at Stanford University
- Thomas, whom I met once about fifteen years ago through mutual friends
- Sister Helen Prejan is Twittering and blogging
- Hilary Clinton and Barak Obama are Twittering
- A live Raconteurs concert being broadcast by All Songs Considered
- Blackbaud acquired Kintera. Whoa! I don’t know why I’m surprised
- The new Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin is gay
Okay, so the outages are a little annoying. But this is all pretty cool.
Twitter: My New Obsession
May 28, 2008 § Leave a comment
So, I’m finally figuring out what to do with Twitter and why it is so cool. I got into it because I’m writing an article about how people are using technology to create and promote social change movements, and I wanted to see for myself how people were using it.
I started following some of the contacts that I have made through Ma.gnolia, I’ve stumbled upon some friends and random acquaintances, and there are several business, nonprofits, and news agencies who are also Twittering.
The greatest example for me of Twitter’s usefulness, I think is NetSquared. This is an organization that helps nonprofits use technology, and they are hosting a conference in San Jose now. I have been able to keep up with what’s happening there with their tweets. They also have a FaceBook page and a website with conference updates, but the tweets are like a play-by-play, informing its followers of the most recent updates to the website of the flickr page.
People talk to each other, too, asking for or offering help and advice, sharing links and information, just putting themselves out there to see what comes back. Or sometimes just to share a little pearl of wisdom or a moment of inspiration, or a good joke.
So, Twitter has been around for a while now, and I’m not the first to review this tool. I have nothing to say here that is revolutionary to anyone who is already using it, but for me it is a revelation! I have a new way to communicate with people doing interesting things. In the couple of days that I’ve been using it, I’ve found some new blogs to read and come across some great resources. I may even have made a couple of friends. Who knows?
One thing that occurs to me as I write (and I’ve been thinking about this a lot regarding all social networking tools) is that the tools are only useful if lots of people use them. There are exceptions, of course, but isn’t the point of social networking to be social, to network? The tools that I use regularly are the ones that lots of other people use, like FaceBook and Ma.gnolia. I’m not saying that functionality isn’t important (and believe me, I’ve already learned the Twitter doesn’t always function), but Twitter just wasn’t interesting to me at all when I wasn’t connecting with anyone. Now that I am networking, it is my new obsession.
InFomentation 